Month: July 2014

While poking around my yard Saturday morning, I became intrigued by the water drops on leaves left from the early morning lawn sprinkling. This is one leaf of tarragon which lives in a strawberry jar near a sprinkler. It reminds me of an eye because the reflections from the pergola above it create an iris with radiating lines from the center.

I cropped this shot to 8X10 which just cropped off the outer edges but didn’t change the size of the image. I also added a vignette to make the other tarragon leaves in the shot a little less prominent.

Focal Length 105mm, ISO 400, f/18, 1/5 second

A couple of months ago, I received a request from the Public Affairs office of CalTrain, the Peninsula rail commute service between San Francisco and San Jose, about one of my very early (Year 1, day 5) blog photos called “Tule Fog”. They wanted to use this photo in their video commemorating 150 years of service. Of course I said “yes” and a couple of days ago, they sent me a link to the newly released Caltrain 150 video. My photo appears a couple of minutes into the 12 minute video and they credited me and Infocusdaily.com at the end of the video. I have to admit that it is exciting and very flattering to have my work publicly displayed and my name up in lights, so to speak. Thank you Caltrain.

Since I couldn’t post to my blog without adding a photo, and since I’ve never taken any photos of Caltrain trains, I’m posting one of the photos I took at the Trains and Tripods event at the California Railroad Museum in early May, which seems appropriate given the subject matter.

My Friday night feast was grilled fresh Sockeye salmon with caper and dill sauce, a green salad with balsamic vinaigrette, grilled tree ripened peaches, and a glass (or three!) of Ménage à Trois. I can’t get enough grilled food…or red wine!

I love to cook and I love to use cooking gadgets. One of my all-time favorite gadgets is my Microplane® grater. I’d seen it used by Martha Stewart once on TV and fell in love with its potential. I’ve had mine for almost 20 years, before these now ubiquitous kitchen gadgets were found in every kitchen store. Thanks to my late husband, who was a woodworker, and who got a catalog from a Canadian wood working company called Lee Valley Hardware, I found a source for this magical gadget.

You see, the Microplane® didn’t start out as a kitchen gadget but as a wood rasp for woodworkers. The wife of the owner of Lee Valley Hardware noted that her husband’s wood rasp was the perfect tool for grating orange and lemon zest. Since the Lee Valley Hardware catalog is a quirky publication and includes not only woodworking tools but all sorts of items that are useful around the home, including some kitchen and garden gadgets that can be found no where else, she convinced her husband to feature the Microplane® rasp, manufactured by Grace Manufacturing in the US, in the kitchen section of the catalog. I found it there and ordered my own. I use it to grate Parmigiano Reggiano, as shown in this photo, nutmeg, lemon and lime zest, chocolate, garlic, ginger. If it needs grating, the Microplane® does it best. Mine doesn’t have a handle, as most sold today do, but it did come with its own hopper that I presume was a specialty item from Lee Valley Hardware, as I have never seen such an item since the Microplane® began to appear in kitchen stores. Here is a link to an article that the New York Times ran a few years ago about the success of the Microplane® as a kitchen gadget.

Oh, and of course my inspiration for this subject matter was my Flickr group topic, “Gadgets.”

Dynamic Tension, most notably a term coined by Charles Atlas (the former 98 pound weakling) almost 100 years ago to describe an exercise method that uses muscles in opposition, is also a term used in photographic composition. I just learned this through my Flickr challenge group and, you guessed it, “dynamic tension” is a recent topic. After a little research, I learned that dynamic tension is used to create visual tension in photographs by using diagonal lines to lead the eye outward from the center of the picture.

I can see this technique used in architectural photography and most of the examples I looked at did feature architecture so finding something structural to photograph was my original plan for this challenge. But when I followed the hummer at midday to her favorite perch high above the yard with the feeder in view, I realized that the diagonal lines created by the bare twigs and branches might serve to create the dynamic tension I was after. I think this shot, with the hummer looking in the opposite direction from the diagonals of the twigs, coupled with the branch in the foreground cutting through its body and casting a dark shadow across it, creates some dynamic tension. I’m really not certain that this translates to photographic dynamic tension but the diagonal twigs criss crossing at angles leading over, under, around, and through (almost), everywhere but to the subject made me tense!

Focal Length 400mm, ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/400

I visited the Farmers’ Market and came home loaded down with seasonal fruits and vegetables. Peaches are in season now and I found some fragrant and flavorful freestone peaches, the luscious Suncrest variety. What a joy it is to eat these peaches without a clingy pit!

I added a slight vignette and decreased the shadows a bit to bring out the details of the “freestone” pit. I used Expodisc to create a custom white balance and set the peaches on a board in my now favorite shooting locale, my north facing window seat window.

D800, Macro lens, Focal Length 105mm, ISO 100, f/20, 1.6 seconds

The basil has bolted and the finches seem to be bolting down the seeds as fast as they can eat them. This male lesser goldfinch, I think the same one I photographed on the fountain yesterday, was so intent on devouring as many basil seeds as possible that he didn’t fly off when I walked outside with my camera just after noon. He looked at me, his beak full of seeds, as if to say, “oh, you again?” and then kept eating. There were clouds so the sun wasn’t quite as intense as it could have been at that time of day.

I’m happy with the exposure. I decreased the contrast slightly in Lightroom and increased the yellow saturation but those are the only adjustments I made other than cropping.

Focal Length 400mm, ISO 800, f/5/6, 1/1600

I went out after 7PM and sat on the patio and both the male and female finch came to feed on the basil seeds even though I sat just a few feet away. The female was much shier than the male so I didn’t get any shots of her but as you can see, the male’s beak is covered with basil seed. I decided to try flash. My friend Richard suggested I try flash after reading how dissatisfied I have been with my exposure lately. And even though I didn’t bother to attach my speed light and just used the on camera flash with its output reduced by about two stops, I think I improved my exposure and overall photograph significantly. Thanks, Richard, for reminding me that it is OK to use flash. Next I’ll be experimenting with my speed light and the Better Beamer, a fresnel type lens that attaches to the speed light to project the flash output for lenses over 300mm.

I much prefer this shot to the midday one because of the shallower depth of field and the lack of clutter in the shot. I was much closer to the bird so more of the background went out of focus despite using the same aperture. This photograph is not cropped and I made no adjustments to it other than my standard Lightroom preset.

Focal Length 400mm, ISO 500, f/5.6 1/200 On Camera flash with output at -2

All of the birds that frequent my garden seem to enjoy the bubbling fountain, especially when the temperatures hover around 100 for days on end. They’re giving me an opportunity to practice with my 80-400 lens. About 11 AM, this little female house sparrow plunged head first into the bubble, then emerged looking a bit dazed. The trouble I’m having with setting exposure is that most of the day, the rafters of the pergola cast deep shadows over the fountain and the birds are usually half in and half out of the shade when I take a photograph. These shots were all underexposed until I tweaked the exposure in Lightroom.

As shot: Focal Length 400mm; ISO 250; f/5.6; 1/640

I ventured outside in the peak heat about 5PM because I saw the hummer flitting about but when I went out, the hummer disappeared. I did capture a couple of shots of the male lesser goldfinch. This time, the shot was overexposed so I reduced the highlights and shadows in Lightroom.

As shot: Focal Length 400mm; ISO 500; f/5.6; 1/400

Apparently, I should have used the afternoon exposure settings for the morning shots and the morning exposures for the afternoon shot.

The female hummer got a few minutes of “me time” this evening and came to the feeder rather elusively after espying me sitting on the patio with my camera and monster lens in my lap. I had already set the exposure including setting the ISO to 500 in the hopes that the hummer might come to the feeder which at this hour was backlit.

The United States is a melting pot, after all, and you can’t always have hamburgers and apple pie on the Fourth of July. Thanks to Raley’s Supermarket’s quarterly publication, “Something Extra,” I enjoyed charcoal grilled Korean Tacos on the Fourth of July, one of the many grilling recipes featured in the latest issue. I had already tried the recipe and this fusion delight was just as delicious the second time. I didn’t really take much time setting up the shot because the food was getting cold, despite the 100° plus temperatures outside, and I wanted to enjoy my fusion food while it was still warm.

It’s the Fourth of July. How could I NOT post a flag photo?

I accompanied a friend on a business trip to Reno Thursday and on the way home, we stopped at “Vista Point” on I-80 because neither of us had ever stopped there to see the “vista.” As it turns out, the “vista” is Emigrant Gap, a hazardous portion of the emigrant trail over the Sierra Nevada in the mid 1800’s where wagons had to be lowered by ropes to the floor of Bear Valley to navigate the treacherous passage.

I took the shot at mid afternoon and it was bright, sunny, with just a bit of haze so I decided to give the photo a more vintage look. Barely visible in the shot is a commemorative cross, apparently erected at some point to commemorate the hazardous Sierra crossings. I didn’t notice the cross until I viewed the photos on my computer. It can be seen, if you look closely, in the lower left quadrant of the photo.

Looks like the little hummer extricated himself from whatever was stuck on his beak last evening.

ISO 500 f/5.6 1/200

Last evening, as the temperature dipped ever so slightly, at least enough for me to venture outside with my glass of Ménage à Trois and enjoy the early evening in my yard, I noticed one of the hummers perched on the edge of the fountain. Of course my camera was in my lap, the D7100 with the 80-400 attached with the ISO set to 800 (!) so I took several shots. I noticed the hummer was trying to get something off its beak and flew to a twig in the shrubs and tried to shake it off. I hope eventually the hummer got it off its beak. When the hummer flew off, one of the lesser goldfinches landed on the fountain and looked at me as if to say, “you still here?” So I left.

It was almost 8PM when I took these shots and the sun had dipped completely behind the fence so I should have upped the ISO or opened the aperture. As it was, each of these shots needed a full stop increase in exposure. Once again, not great shots but with practice, I’ll get better.

I haven’t posted for a couple of days because I haven’t taken a single photograph that I felt was blog-worthy. Today up in Auburn, I came across some pieces of rusty, old Gold Country mining equipment that have been used to enhance a bank parking lot. It was late afternoon, I was hot, and I was tired but I did take a few shots. I was not particularly thrilled with any of these shots, either, but since I’m feeling like a bit of a slackard because I haven’t posted in a couple of days, this one will have to do.

These rusty spokes are part of a Pelton Wheel, manufactured at the Miners Foundry and Supply Co. out of Nevada City. The Pelton Wheel is basically a more efficient type of water wheel used in the mining camps.